


Famine and Apple Pies

by PomoneCorse



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Gen, Love is going to fix everything, Maybe baking pies is a healthier coping mechanism than skinning people, no one said it had to be romantic love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 11:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PomoneCorse/pseuds/PomoneCorse
Summary: The sun hadn’t yet gone down when John's car pulled up in the driveway to Seed Ranch. He had half a mind to spend the evening in the softest nightwear, staring at the ceiling with non-cult-approved music blaring as loud as it could go.He was not at all ready for the sight that greeted him in the living room: an old woman at the head of the table, a pile of apples higher than she was tall before her, and his guards on either side, happily chattering the evening away.





	Famine and Apple Pies

John had no idea what he expected out of his day, but this was not it.

He had just spent three harrowing hours standing waist-deep in the Henbane, the smell of the Bliss his acolytes had spilled making him light-headed. His beard had not yet recovered from the tugging and tearing, despite the organic beard oil he’d taken extra care to apply after the incident.

The sun hadn’t yet gone down when his car pulled up in the driveway to Seed Ranch. The weather had been warm enough for a simple silk shirt earlier in the river, but he now regretted his choice of clothing, and had half a mind to spend the evening in the softest nightwear, staring at the ceiling with non-cult-approved music blaring as loud as it could go. Maybe flip through old selfies, contemplate yet another voicemail Joseph had left. Order new skincare products. Resolutely refuse to consider the growing pile of newspapers on his desk, definitely not think about the way the Resistance was growing stronger with those thorns digging in his side.

  
He was not at all ready for the sight that greeted him in the living room.

An old woman sat at the head of the table, a pile of apples higher than she was tall before her. On either side Project members were slicing the peeled apples and passing them to two others to arrange in pretty shapes in pie plates. 

“What‘s this?” he asked, careful to keep his voice flat.

The woman barely looked to him, and slid her knife around the fruit in her hands.

“I was making pie,” the wizened old lady said as she kept peeling off one long strip of skin, “and these young people were nice enough to help me.”

“I meant- what-”

“The apples were going to spoil, what with the way you kept them in those crates. Now, be a dear and get a chair to come take over for me. These eyes aren’t what they used to.”

 

Before he knew what happened, John straddled a stool, hands flying over fruit and knife, listening intently as a stranger debated the pros and cons of apple cultivars. The Project members at the table were all happily chattering away, and for a brief moment he was reminded of family reunions he had never actually been able to go to, as John Duncan or John Seed.

“.... and yes, Red Delicious isn't actually all that good, as I'm sure you know, but instead of throwing the batch away I think we should keep them to make jam. Do you like jam, John?”

Hearing his name was as unpleasant a shock as taking a dip in the Henbane had been earlier.

“Yes,” he stuttered. “Yes, I like jam.”

The woman nodded like she already knew.

“I thought as much.”

She studied him over her half-moon spectacles, dark brown eyes stopping on his hands and the tattooed skin of his arms. He felt the urge to cover up. Nonsense; and yet this elderly guest had something of an aura that made him long for a respectable sweater and sensible shoes.

“You have questions,” she stated, turning her gaze back to her handiwork.

He had many, truth be told, and no idea which to start with.

“Who the f- who are you? How did you get in here? Are you with the Resistance? Did my brother-”

And here he stopped. It chilled him to the bone to consider that this might have been a test, another obstacle in his path to Eden’s Gates. That no matter what, no matter how devoted, he still had failed, or might have failed Joseph.

The little old lady sighed. With surprising ease she stood up, and he followed suit.

“My name is Inez Hargen, but you can just call me Inez,” she told him as she gestured for him to pick up the finished pies. “I’ve been looking for my granddaughter for a week or so now, and I was told you knew where she had gone.”

 

John trailed wordlessly after her to the kitchen, arms full of pies. Something about that name sounded familiar, but he put it out of his mind.

“She’s been working so hard lately, and you know how us old ladies get. Worried sick when the kids don’t call. I told my book club how concerned I was getting, and you know what they said?”

John had never, in fact, been to an octogenarian gathering of any kind, and certainly not to their book or bingo or whatever clubs. Inez wasted no time in waiting for an answer as she set the dishes from his arms to the kitchen table.

“They looked me in the eye and told me I had to get used to the fact she just forgot about me! Can you believe that? Mi coraz ó ncita, forgetting anything? Forgetting me?”

John could only make a noise of agreement, despite not knowing what his interlocutor was actually talking about. The woman shrugged, and pointed at the fancy piece of machinery he’d never had to use by himself before.

“Could you be a dear and preheat that oven of yours?”

“Listen, Inez,” he said as he fiddled with the buttons, hoping they actually did something. He hadn’t had to cook in ten years, and before that, he’d eaten out almost every night. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I know who your granddaughter is. We’ve got a lot of people here at the Project, and-”

Inez whirled around so fast John feared her frail little body might have broken somewhere.

“Nonsense!” She exclaimed, outrage evident in the squared and tense set of her shoulders. She caught his gaze, and something softened in hers.

“John, I know you’re a very busy young man,” she said as she grabbed both of his hands.

She had a surprisingly strong grasp, he noted. Thin leathery hands, but also rougher calluses on the inside of her palms.

“But can’t you help an old woman out? I’m just looking for my family. You understand what that’s like, don’t you?”

For a heartbeat John was seven years old again, and watching his brothers’ silhouettes shrink smaller as he sat in the back of a moving car. Twenty-four, and standing alone watching the Atlanta city lights from his brand new apartment, the nauseating smell of cleaning products enough to give him a headache fifteen years later. Twenty-eight, and having finally found Jacob in that homeless shelter, a reunion guided by Joseph’s Voice, his brother so sure and certain of the path ahead.

“Oh, pobrecito,” Inez shushed him as she tightened her hold on his hands. “Wipe those tears, put in the pies for thirty minutes, and tell me what’s happened.”

 

Sure, there had been alarm bells ringing in his head ever since he walked in his home, but something in the way his uninvited guest looked right through him, without fear or worship, made him want to tell her everything.

 

So he did.

**Author's Note:**

> Self-care is writing a Love Saves the Day fic about my oc's grandmother to make up for the Cursed Ship I've already written
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](http://mademoisellegush.tumblr.com/), i wanna chatter about ocs!  
> Also, Inez is already adopting your own deputies as we speak,, she's unstoppable. she's on her way, and she's got _cough drops_


End file.
